The Code of Hammurabi ...... on the wireless today

Now, this is one I am looking forward to listening to.

Stele of Hammurabi, circa 1751 BC

It is 40 minutes of wonderful discussion on the laws of the  Babylon King of Hammurabi from the In Our Time series.*

"Misha Glenny and guests discuss the laws that Hammurabi (c1810 - c1750 BC), King of Babylon, had carved into a black basalt pillar in present day Iraq and which, since its rediscovery in 1901 in present day Iran, has affirmed Hammurabi's reputation as one of the first great lawmakers. 

Visitors to the Louvre in Paris can see it on display with almost 300 rules in cuneiform, covering anything from ‘an eye for an eye’ to how to handle murder, divorce, witchcraft, false accusations and more. 

The Code of Hammurabi, as it became known, made such an impression in Mesopotamia that it was copied and shared for a millennium after his death and, since its reemergence, Hammurabi and his Code have been commemorated in the US Capitol and the International Court of Justice.

With Martin Worthington, Professor in Middle Eastern Studies at Trinity College Dublin, Frances Reynolds, Shillito Fellow and Associate Professor of Assyriology at the University of Oxford and Senior Research Fellow at The Queen’s College and, Selena Wisnom, Lecturer in the Heritage of the Middle East at the University of Leicester

Producer: Simon Tillotson"

Picture; Stele of Hammurabi, circa 1751 BC, Department of Near Eastern Antiquities of the Louvre Museum, Photo created by Mbzt, I the copyright holder of this work, hereby publish it under the following licenses:

GNU head Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 

*The Code of Hammurabi, In Our Time, BBC Radio 4, https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m002r4v1

One hundred years of one house on Well Hall Road, part 3, looking for the first residents

Our house today

This is where we lived  in for thirty years.

We moved into 294 Well Hall Road in March 1964 and while us kids slowly moved out over the years it remained my dad’s home till 1994.

And so I have decided to explore its history.

I can’t say I have ever thought of the people who lived their lives in our house but now I think it is time to start.

After all we accounted for just under a third of its existence and so I have begun to look for the people who were there before us.

Now  most of the spade work is being done by my friend Jean who has already been down to the Heritage Centre at Greenwich and trawled the street directories from when the estate was built.

And Jean will be back there looking for connections between the first occupants and the personnel records of the Royal Arsenal during the Great War.

The first of those residents was Basil Nunn who lived in our house until 1919 and was followed by Alfred W Rendle who stayed there until 1928.

I have great hopes that much more will be revealed for of course once you have a name then lots follow.  I have already started looking at the electoral registers for the period, and in time there may be the odd newspaper story, baptismal and marriage record and perhaps even someone who remembers them.

Added to this I will be able to conjure up the family who occupied our house and give a different context to the rooms we took for granted including how those rooms looked originally and how they might have been used.

The Bullet Factory, the Arsenal, circa 1916

And not for the first time during the search I have lapsed into a bit of idle speculation, pondering on which part of the Royal Arsenal Mr Nunn and perhaps Mr Randel worked in and whether they took the tram or cycled to Woolwich.

In turn I have thought about what they did to the garden and whether Mrs Nunn or Mrs Randel complained about the steep staircase which runs up the centre of the house, and how many times in a day they had to use them.

But all of that is a flight of fancy and rather stops me from the serious business of finding out more about the house and the first families who lived there.

So while Jean beavers away I shall go digging for any evidence of what the house might have been like when brand new and Mr Nunn moved in.

Research by Jean Gammons

Location; Well Hall, Eltham, London

Pictures; 294 Well Hall Road in 2014 courtesy of Chrissie Rose and inside the Royal Arsenal from the collection of Mark Flynn, The Bullet Factory, W H Kingsway, http://www.markfynn.com/

*One hundred years of one house in Well Hall, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/One%20100%20years%20of%20one%20house%20in%20Well%20Hall

Back with Derrick A. Lea in the Chorlton of 1955

It’s one of those odd things that we have few pictures of Chorlton in the 1950s. 

Now there are a few fine collections in the Local History archive* but nothing compared with the huge range and number from the beginning of both the 20th century and the last decades of the 19th.

So when examples come up it is as well to include them in the story of Chorlton.

And so here we have another from the pen of Derrick A. Lea who drew pictures of the area in the 50s.  As I have said before along with J Montgomery Mr Lea is a bit of a mystery.

I know a little about him including where he lived in Chorlton and that some of his pictures were turned into greetings cards and that is about it.

Now given that pictures as opposed to photographs of where we live do not turn us as regularly his collection are quite unique.

This one is of Wilbraham Road sometime in 1955 and it appears to be a warm day in perhaps March or early April because despite the absence of any leaves on the trees people are walking around without those heavy overcoats everyone seemed to wear during the period.

Of course there may be a bit of poetic license here but there is much that is just as it should.

And it is a scene that has changed.  The Conservative Club and Public Hall was still solid reminder of the fact that Chorlton elected Conservative politicians to the Town Hall  and would do so until 1986.

In much the same way the Lloyd's Hotel has not changed overmuch since it was built in 1870

But with the benefit of hindsight we know that Mr Lea’s picture captured a Chorlton that has now gone forever.  The Conservative Club and Public Hall closed earlier in the year after the Conservative Association had wound itself up and currently the plans are to convert the building into flats.

The Lloyd’s may appear superficially the same, but internally much has been altered.  The small rooms have been knocked through, and the staircase taken down.

I can’t say the changes are for the worse.  I remember it from the late 1970s and early 80s as a place waiting for something to happen.

All of which would have pleased its landlady back in the 1880s.  This was a Mrs Crabtree who by all accounts “improved the place considerably in various particulars” and it may have been her who encouraged the bowling green members to build their own club house which was open on Wednesdays during the season.

She was an enterprising woman with an eye for business and also laid out a lawn tennis court on the open land along side Whitelow Road.

By the time I had washed up in Chorlton the tennis courts had become a drab car park while going inside the pub was like stepping back into the 1950s.

Nor did much seem to improve during the course of the next decade, and sadly the place became somewhere you went to only for a quick during before eating on Wilbraham Road.

But the place has undergone a series of makeovers in the course of the last few years, and is really a fun place to drop into for a drink, a meal and soon the launch of our new book, nothing to do in chorlton, Martledge Lost and Found.

Which brings me back to Wilbraham Road in 1955.

Picture;  Wilbraham Road in 1955, Derrick A. Lea


*http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass

Rediscovering Cheetham .............. nu 1 the Manchester Ice Palace

Now I will leave the story of Cheetham, Strangeways and Redbank to  those who are far more qualified to write about its history.*

Instead I shall feature some of Andy Robertson’s pictures from his collection taken of the area during August 2015.

It is thirty years since I was a regular visitor to the Strangeways area, and much has changed. 

In particular that area in the bend of the river which had once been a  notorious slum and which I knew as open ground has now been built on again.

But a few of the buildings which date to when the area was a thriving centre of Jewish life have survived.

And so here is the Ice Palace on Derby Street which Andy commented “was opened in 1910 and once reputed to be the finest ice skating rink in the world.”

Picture; The Manchester Ice Palace, 2015 from the collection of Andy Robertson

*The  Making of Manchester Jewry, 1740-1875, Bill Williams, 1976

Surprises ……. St Matthews Sunday School

I have always liked the former St Matthews Sunday School that stands on Liverpool Road.

It is a simple but pleasing building which I think was paid for out of a fund created by the Government to commemorate the victory at Waterloo.

My Pevsner’s just records, “St Matthew’s Sunday School, dated 1827, converted to offices in the 1980s. Brick, two storeys, with an apsidal s end and windows with pointed arches and simple Y-tracery”.*

Given the whole sale destruction of many of the buildings along the road, it is always a surprise that it survived.

But survive it did, and this is the rear, on Rice Street.

Location; Castlefield

Picture; St Matthews Sunday School, 2022, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

*Manchester, Clare Hartwell, Pevsner Architectural Guides, Penguin Books, 2001, p269

Stories of the Great War from Eltham and Woolwich ............. nu 2 losing your job on the Well Hall estate

Now I wonder how the individual stories of people living on the Progress Estate played out after the Great War*.

The estate as most people are aware was built for Arsenal workers.

The first to move into our house on Well Hall Road were Mr and Mrs Nunn from Ipswich.

He was a blacksmith by trade and in 1911 had been employed in an engineering works.

And it is perhaps easy to see the attractions of their new home over number 56 Rosebery Road in Ipswich which while it had a garden was one of these older mid terraced properties surrounding by similar drab streets.

But in the end it may have just been the work and the Arsenal, because in 1918 with the end of the war and only three years after they settled in Well Hall they left for Ipswich.

Now that isn’t surprising because there were 50,000 men and 25,000 women and girls employed at the Arsenal which was to be slimmed down to just 10,000 men with the Armistice.

Many like Mr Nunn returned to their pre war occupations and some efforts were made to help others including the large workforce of women and girls.

According to one source Miss Lilian Barker who had acted as Lady Superintendant of Ordinance Factories found work for some women and girls “in domestic service, nursing, shirt making and factory work .......Evening classes were opened in conjunction with the L.C.C., concerts, dances sports and entertainments organised by the Borough Council and even holidays at the seaside for both single women and mothers with children.”**

But despite such efforts unemployment rose and men and women who a few months earlier had been in high paid gainful employment were now looking to relief.

The concern and determination to do something was reflected in a variety of ways.  In March 1919 “some of the men discharged from the Arsenal but had not yet moved out of the hutments demanded rent reductions and prevailed on others to join them in a rent strike.”*

While women munitions workers demonstrated at only being given a week’s notice.

All of which begs the question of what happened to all those on the estate?

Unfortunately the census return for the years after the Great War are still closed but the 1939 register offers up some interesting insights into the occupation of those living in Well Hall.

At our house were Mr and Mrs Jarvis who had moved in 1929.  He gave his job as a “Technical chemist, Food and Chemical” which would suggest he was not employed at the Arsenal.

Likewise their near neighbours from 288 Well Hall Road up to 310 were engaged in a whole variety of occupations from clerical and sales work to printing, engineering, carpentry and hairdressing.

With more research it should be possible to get a full profile of the whole estate but that it’s a snap shot a full decade after the war.


Pictures; 294 Well Hall Road in 2014 courtesy of Chrissie Rose and inside the Royal Arsenal from the collection of Mark Flynn, The Bullet Factory, W H Kingsway, http://www.markfynn.com/ 

*One hundred years of one house in Well Hall, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/search/label/One%20hundred%20years%20of%20one%20house%20in%20Well%20Hall

*** The Woolwich Story, 1970, E. F. E. Jefferson.

Crossing the Mersey in 1955 to Jackson's Boat

Like many of Derrick A. Lea’s pictures of Chorlton this one was made in the winter.

We are at Jackson’s Boat, that pub across the river and the year is 1955.

Now I have written about Mr Lea already and I keep getting drawn back to his images of Chorlton which were made in the 1950s.

They work for me on a number of different levels.

At its simplest they remind me of the style of pictures I grew up with.

But it is also that you don’t see many drawings, paintings or wood cuts of the township, so these are particularly appealing.

“The pub was built in the 18th century and so might count as the oldest in the township.  It was known variously as the Old Greyhound and the Boat House, before reverting back to the old Greyhound.  Briefly it was called Jackson’s Boat and then the Greyhound from 1834. 

The names may in part be explained by the origins of the site.    At some point a farmer called Jackson farmed the land and kept a boat for ferrying passengers across the river. 

Later still Samuel Wilton built a bridge in 1816 over the river at this point at a cost of £200.  

But the ferry and the right to transport passengers across the Mersey were still in place in 1832 when the pub and the surrounding land were put up for sale. 

The advert throws some light on how the relationship between owner and tenant. The land and pub were owned by John Marsland and tenanted by a George Brownhill who seems to have benefited from the ferry charges.  

The sale in 1832 went to Edmund Howarth who may well have placed Samuel in as tenant.”*

All of which may seem a long way from the picture, but not so.  In 1955 the bridge was free to walk across, but until the late 1940s there had been a toll, which had been there since Sam Wilton’s old bridge in 1816 and was just a continuation of the fee charged to cross the river by the ferry.

The gate was on the south side of the bridge and there are those who can just remember paying the penny to cross over, and one wonderful story of a young girl who chose to chance her luck and crossed by a more dangerous and unconventional way.

She lived in the Block which was a collection of cottages on Hardy Lane, and this seemed a quicker and cheaper alternative to a long walk or the penny payment.

Picture; Derrick A. Lea

Location; Chorlton

*The Story of Chorlton-cum-Hardy, Andrew Simpson 2012, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/search/label/A%20new%20book%20for%20Chorlton